Galactic Civilizations Review

Interstellar micromanagement done right.

It's always a pleasure to watch a small PC-based games developer do well, as I've pointed out repeatedly while praising the efforts of such distinctive companies as Frog City, A-Sharp, Spiderweb Software, and Malfador Machinations. It's a more satisfying experience still when such a developer keeps afloat over the years, neither sinking from lack of success nor vanishing into the bowels of some monolithic, impossibly rich game producer. Stardock Systems has impressed me on both counts, repeatedly producing games and Windows customization applications that please. However, their efforts have never before placed them in the spotlight. With Galactic Civilizations, they just might have their breakthrough product. I've mixed reactions about some aspects of this 4x space strategy game, but at no point was I in doubt that it has a lot going for it.

Configure Yourself: While most 4x space strategy games let you choose your race and customize from there, you always play the humans in Galactic Civilizations. This limitation is going to divide players. I confess that I've never liked playing humans in strategy titles or RPGs. (They smell funny. They also make little sense most of the time, as even humans themselves will attest.) I prefer the idea of selecting an exotic race with pre-figured strengths, weaknesses, and galactic relationships; and if you can adjust that race's strengths and weaknesses on top of everything else, as in Master of Orion II and III, all the better. Stardock Systems says that many random events in the game rely upon your being human to make sense of it all, but from those events I've seen, racially generic ones seemed a distinct possibility. That said, you can still customize your Terrans using ten points on twenty-four categories (including Diplomacy, Morale, Weapons and Speed).

You get to select the size of the universe, number of inhabitable stars, and basic winning conditions, as well. Turning your opponents into mounted heads on a den wall is of course one time-tested route to victory, but Galactic Civilizations provides three alternatives. Technological and Alliance Victories derive from SMAC (Sid Meiers' Alpha Centauri), while the Cultural Victory (Civilization III) sets out to convert opponent-owned stars into your own by cultural suasion. Not only is it a nice mix of options, but you'll find that your AI enemies are quite adept at switching methods in midstream to whatever victory condition they can most likely achieve.

There are no multiplayer options; only one-to-five AI opponents. Rather than receiving default personalities, each is rated along an RPG scale from "pure evil," "chaotic evil," "neutral," "chaotic good," to "pure good." None of these terms means much in itself. Put simply, the nicer a race's rating, the easier it is for them to eventually form alliances with other "good" races and help one another out, and the less inclined they are to immediately attack another race they encounter. Morality also determines what high end technologies are offered to a race. Very evil species can ultimately learn Advanced Slavery and Pain Amplifiers (for that extra bit of tasered morale), while extremely good species get Benevolence (boosts diplomacy) and The Better Way (boosts cultural influence). However, I've played through a variety of conditions and games in more than eighty hours spent with Galactic Civilizations, and I've been threatened with war by "pure good" types who first ran across me. They've also on occasion rabidly declared war on all other races that possessed a weaker military. Evidently, being good in Galactic Civilizations doesn't prevent you from having a bad hair day as long as a solar year on Pluto.

(This leads to the question of your own moral barometer. You start as neutral, but as you colonize planets, you'll be thrust into situations that demand simple multiple choice replies. The standard good answer either reaps no benefit, or deducts from something the planet might otherwise offer you: a percentage loss to morale or a lower population limit, for instance. The standard evil reply gives you a strong bonus, but moves you morally towards the evil side. The neutral reply may provide no bonus or penalty, or something slight, either way. Strongly good or evil is the way to go, as you'll get the same tech options that your good or evil opponents receive. The interface colors change as well, in a move reminiscent of Might and Magic VII; so does the music. It's a pleasant, if minor point.)

You can choose the level of AI for each opponent, as well. This is an area I'll be covering separately later in the review. Suffice to say for now, however, that even the "below average" choice can present a decent challenge to players with a few games under their belt. Note, you can randomize both the good/evil spectrum and AI choices for an opponent, in which case the game doesn't reveal the results it generates. Nice touch, that.

The Interface: Once in the game, you'll see a screen divided into four sections. The right column consists of a galactic minimap, a mini-chart, and a news display. The main section of the screen is a local 2D map, with a generic background of starry dust across a black sky. Movement takes place from a flat, topdown perspective, in attractive, 1078 x 768 resolution. Gaming conventions are respected: you left-click to select a ship (or anything else), and right-click to select a destination. If the destination can't be reached in one turn, the ship will find the quickest path to its objective over multiple turns, pointing to the 22th century survival of either Mapquest or AAA.

Stars look like colored dimes, and ships are roughly the same size, all of which takes some getting used to. The main screen and top two mini-screens each have their own series of buttons, as well. For example, under the mini-chart, there are controls that display the relative influence, population growth, economic, military, manufacturing, and research might of each empire you've met. Below the main are buttons (also available through F keys) that swap out the three mini-screens for a list of all your planets (with very basic information), or a list of all your starships. The main screen itself can be swapped out for screens displaying Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, or Research. I personally prefer a full screen display of all my planets with more data than Galactic Civilizations furnishes, but the alternative has its merits.